


Four Long Distance Phone Calls (and one time they didn't need it)

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Brotherly Bonding, Family Feels, Friendship, Gen, Missing Scene, Season/Series 02 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 22:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16206944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "Next time you're captured by a ninja zombie death cult and then have a building fall on you, maybe consider dropping a line to your business partner."Four times Danny and Ward called each other (or someone called on their behalf) + bonus.





	Four Long Distance Phone Calls (and one time they didn't need it)

**Author's Note:**

> Starts post-S1; contains Defenders and S2 spoilers. For my "estrangement" h/c bingo square.

**1\. After Harold's death**

It was in a small town in the mountains in Thailand where they got cell reception for the first time in days. Danny and Colleen were taking a few days to rest up, waiting for Danny's stab wounds to knit adequately enough that he wasn't going to fall over bleeding the first time he exerted himself (Colleen's choice of words) and Colleen's sprained wrist to get back to the point where she could wield a katana with that hand.

And there were two messages on Danny's voice mail from Ward.

"Danny," said the first message, and it was _startling_ to hear Ward's lazy drawl here, when Danny was sitting on an upturned feed bucket beside a pig shed, looking down over terraced rice paddies. There was a long hesitation after that, as if Ward had already run out of things to say. Finally he said, "Call me," and hung up without saying goodbye.

"To delete, press 7," the automated voice informed Danny. "To archive --" and he was already pushing the button to archive, without really being sure why. It was just odd to hear Ward's voice for the first time since he'd left New York. He hadn't gotten _used_ to this again, the way that a phone could bring someone's voice into your ear from half a world away.

It wasn't the first time he'd heard from Ward, although it was the first phone call. They'd been in touch off and on since he'd left, by email and occasionally text. Business matters, always. Ward was serious about cleaning up the corruption in the company, and equally serious (it seemed) about the two of them running the company together. Personal stuff slipped in, unasked-for, between the lines. Ward had asked, once, if Danny had heard anything from Joy, and Danny said no; Danny had attached, to a business email, a photo of the sunset from the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, where he and Colleen were having dinner. Ward's emails and texts could be brutally short and to the point, but when he was in a good mood (or an especially impatient one) his dry sarcasm came through so clearly that Danny could almost hear him saying it. Danny wasn't sure what Ward heard in his own emails back.

He moved on to the next voice mail, timestamped three days later. "Danny," said that voice from his past. "Guess you're either in the middle of nowhere somewhere or avoiding me. Or busy. Or dead." There was a brief pause. "Anyway, it's not that big of a deal. Business stuff. I need your 51 percent for something and it's easier to explain over the phone than to type it all out. Call me when you get done with whatever kung fu bullshit you're into this time." Another brief pause. "Unless you're dead." And that was all.

Danny archived that one, too. He did the time conversion in his head. It was morning here, so late evening of the previous day in New York, but Ward (knowing Ward) was probably still at the office, or at least likely to be awake. Danny leaned back against the side of the shed and listened to the phone ring on the other side of the world.

It rang long enough that he was expecting voice mail, and in fact it took him a moment to realize that it was actually Ward speaking and not a recording. "Well, well," that dry voice said. "The prodigal is heard from at last."

And Danny laughed suddenly; he couldn't help it. "You know, this is the first time I've ever made a long-distance phone call in my life?"

"Glad to help you check another item off your bucket list." There was the sound of typing in the background, behind Ward's wry voice. 

"You're still at the office?" Danny asked, leaning against the sun-warmed wall.

"Not really much of anywhere else these days, since someone decided gallivanting off to Asia was more important than running our fathers' company." But there was no particular rancor in Ward's tone. He almost sounded amused. And tired, Danny thought.

His imagination filled it in: the glass walls, the city skyline, the white-and-chrome expanse of Ward's office lit only with desk lamps and the city's glow; Ward, looking small at the desk, dwarfed by the city behind him.

"You could too," Danny said suddenly, impulsively. "Take a week off. Come to Thailand. We'll show you around."

There was a dry huff of laughter on the other end of the phone. "Oh, is that where you are?"

"For now."

"Mmm. Well, some of us have more important things to do."

And Danny thought, and almost said: we do too. As soon as he and Colleen recovered, they needed to be on the trail of the Hand again. There was something big going down, and K'un Lun was gone; there wasn't _time_ for reaching out with olive branches to an estranged family member or whatever Ward was to him now.

Still. He kind of liked the idea of exploring Thailand with Colleen and Ward. He hadn't seen much of it either, and most of what he'd seen so far had been mountains and catacombs. Maybe someday, when the Hand wasn't a threat anymore. If a day like that ever came.

"You still there, on your first and only long-distance call?" Ward wanted to know. "You know, the thing about phones is, the person on the other end can't see you when you stop talking."

"Then you can't see I'm flipping you off right now."

"Jes- _us."_ But Ward sounded amused. "Are you still ten years old or what?"

"It's called being young at heart. Anyway," Danny said, "you had some kind of business thing, didn't you?"

"Oh right. Yeah. I need you and your 51 percent shares to help me overrule a stupid decision the board made the other day --"

The clatter of keys fell silent as Ward swung into a business-jargon-laced explanation that Danny only understood about ten percent of, if that, but he leaned back against the wall of the pig shed and closed his eyes in the morning sunshine and listened to Ward's voice, transporting him 8,000 miles away to the nighttime city of his childhood.

* * *

**2\. Midland Circle (1)**

Copenhagen in the morning. There wasn't really time to enjoy it, with business concerns pressing on him from all sides, but Ward had decided to make time, and was savoring a cup of coffee at a little sidewalk café.

It was these little moments that got him through these days -- through the loneliness without Joy, the directionlessness without Harold, the emptiness without the drugs and alcohol that used to ease the lows and blunt the highs and get him through the day.

But the funny thing about it was, with most of the bigger things gone, he'd started to notice little things he had never noticed before. The bright color of flowers at a sidewalk vendor's cart; the smell of good coffee; the sound of the rain.

His days were long and gray, but punctuated in bright little moments, and damned if he was going to let those moments slip by without stopping to appreciate them.

His phone buzzed on the café table. Ward glanced at it. Unknown number. He let it go to voice mail. They didn't leave a message.

Not 30 seconds later, they called back again. Persistent bastards. This time the phone gave the short buzz for a new voice mail. Ward stared off into the distance for a minute or two before he gave in and answered. Could be important. Was more likely a wrong number or the kind of business that could wait at the very least until he was back in the hotel's conference center. But he knew it'd nag at him all morning if he didn't answer.

"Ward," a female voice said, "it's Colleen. Colleen Wing. I know we don't really know each other, but I felt like someone ought to tell you. And warn you." Brief pause. "Danny's been taken by the Hand," Colleen said, and now he was still, totally still, listening with everything in him, the city's sounds receding to a distant hum. "I guess I should say, we think they took him. It's better than -- anyway. Listen. They're targeting Danny's friends and family members, among other people. I don't know if you'll be a target, out of the country you're probably safe, but as Danny's business partner, you might not be. Take precautions. And I ... I'll call you when I have news, I guess. I gotta go." She hung up.

When Ward tried to call her back, she wasn't answering.

* * *

**3\. Midland Circle (2)**

Afterwards, Danny barely remembered getting back to the dojo. Colleen stripped off her bloody sweatshirt as soon as they were inside, leaving it with her shoes on the floor.

"Should've gotten something to eat while we were out," Colleen said wearily as they stumbled into the attached living quarters. "There's not going to be anything here. Maybe some canned stuff and boxes of crackers, I don't know, whatever was there when we left ..."

"I'm not hungry," Danny said.

"Stop." She pressed a hand to his back and leaned into him until he slowly let himself lean back against her. "You didn't cause this. It's not your fault."

"I don't think it's my fault," Danny lied.

"No more than Misty is my fault."

"It's not. You know that."

"Pot," she sighed, her arms wrapping around him from behind. "Kettle."

They stayed that way until Colleen's phone vibrated in her pocket, making her jump. She cursed softly and fumbled it out, glanced at the screen, hesitated, then put it to her ear. Danny moved away wearily toward the sink, not really sure what he wanted. Drink of water, maybe. He'd had some coffee at the station. He couldn't really _think._ He'd lost track of how many hours it had been since the explosion ...

Colleen was saying his name. Danny turned toward her numbly; she was holding out her phone. "It's for you, believe it or not. Ward."

The words didn't quite make sense; there was no reason why Ward would be calling Colleen. Danny took the phone blankly and held it to his ear. "Yeah?"

"You're a son of a bitch, Danny Rand," Ward's voice growled at him.

From somewhere in the numb emptiness inside him, anger flared up. He just couldn't deal with this right now, that Ward had decided today of all days to be a jackass at him for whatever business thing Ward didn't think he'd handled right.

"Shut up!" he said just as Ward started to say something else, and Ward, startled, fell silent. "Just ... I can't, not today, let's not do this and you can call me and yell at me some other day for whatever I did or didn't do for Rand this time, and --"

"I thought you were _dead,_ you asshole," Ward said, and now it was Danny's turn to go quiet. "I thought you were _dead,_ the last thing I got was a message from Colleen saying the Hand had you, and I know what Midland Circle is, at least I have a pretty good idea, you think I didn't know that when I kicked them to the curb from doing business with Rand? You think we don't get the news here in Copenhagen? You think it wasn't at least _slightly_ obvious that one of their buildings didn't just fall down by itself?"

Ward wasn't yelling, just talking fast in that tightly controlled way he had. He fell silent when he seemed to run out of words, but Danny could still hear him breathing on the line. 

"Oh," Danny said after a minute.

"Oh. Yes. _Oh._ You know," Ward said, sounding a little less tightly wound, "perhaps next time you're captured by a ninja zombie death cult and then have a building fall on you, maybe consider dropping a line to your business partner and, oh I don't know, leaving a voice mail to let me know you aren't dead, for the sake of the business if nothing else."

"I, uh. Will do that." Danny cleared his throat and realized he was teetering on the verge of ... _something,_ some kind of intense emotion he didn't really want to have right now. "It's been a long day, Ward," he said in a voice that cracked a little.

"Yeah, that's implied by the ninja zombie death cult part," and Ward was almost back to his usual tone of dry sarcasm.

"Friends of mine are hurt," Danny said, sitting down where he was on the floor. "Friends of mine are dead."

"You and Colleen okay?"

"Yeah." He looked up at Colleen, who gave him a tired smile. "We're okay."

"You, um, you ..." Ward cleared his throat, sounding embarrassed. "... want to talk about it? Or anything."

"No," Danny said, and he found he was even smiling a little bit. "I ought to go."

"Yeah. Do that. Danny?"

"Mmm?" He was vaguely aware of Colleen settling beside him and sliding an arm around him.

"Watch your back, dumbass."

"I don't know what I'd do without you to tell me these things."

* * *

**4\. After the Hand**

Another day, another acquisition, and the Paris skyline at night looked like any other city from the window of a hotel room. When his phone buzzed on the desk, Ward intended to ignore it -- he needed to finish these spreadsheets before he could sleep, and he had at least an hour to go -- but when he glanced down and saw Danny's name, he couldn't help remembering that the last time he'd ignored a call from these people, Danny got kidnapped by a zombie death cult. Bracing himself, he picked it up. "Yeah?"

"Ward! Hey!" Danny's voice, and he didn't sound kidnapped; he sounded like his usual cheerful golden retriever self, and fresh as a daisy, which was _absolutely_ what Ward wanted to deal with after a long day of wrangling their French business partners.

Ward pressed his fingertips into the spot between his eyebrows where his very special Danny Rand headache was already starting to gather, and resigned himself to getting the spreadsheets done a little later than he'd planned. _You can always hang up, you can always hang up ..._ "You need something, Danny?"

"Just actually kind of wondering where you were. Your assistant said you were supposed to be back in a month, and now it's another month later."

"Not kidnapped by ninjas, in case you were worried." He noticed he'd mistyped a figure -- the columns weren't adding up -- and scrolled back up. "I'm in Paris. As my office could have told you. Is this to do with Rand business?"

"Kind of," Danny said. "Did you know I'm a vigilante now?"

"Wasn't that what you were before?" 

"Yes, but now I'm even more of one. I mean, semi-officially. I probably shouldn't be telling you that, come to think of it. What's new with you?"

An awful suspicion occurred to him then. "Did you call me just to chat?"

"We never talk," Danny said defensively. "We should get to know each other a little better, you know, since we're running the company together and all? I was just thinking -- and you're not in town, I've been by your office a couple of times --"

"I'm _working,_ Danny."

"When are you _not?_ Have you seen anything in Paris yet? Go see the Louvre. I'd love to see the Louvre." He pronounced it phonetically, in English.

Ward barked a laugh. "I'm here to _work._ Anyway, first of all, it's pronounced _Louvre_ , and second, how do you even know it? I thought you were raised in a cave."

"I read. I've been catching up a lot since I got back. I've got a list of places I should see. Have you been to the Eiffel Tower?"

At least he pronounced that one correctly. "I'm not here to sightsee, and I'm going to be here a hell of a lot longer if I don't finish up these spreadsheets tonight."

Danny laughed a little. "Yeah, sorry. I guess I should let you get back to it. Look, at least take a day off or something and see a little of Paris, okay? You work too much."

"One of us has got to." It came out bitter. Ward huffed a sigh and rubbed at the aching spot between his eyebrows, which was at least as much an eyestrain headache as a Danny headache. "Look, I ... Look ... How's Colleen, anyway? You guys still together?"

"Colleen's great," Danny said, in a warmly besotted tone. "We're great."

"Good. I'm glad." And he was, honestly. If the woman could put up with Danny being ... Danny, she was probably a saint, and well worth hanging onto.

"What about you? Met any pretty French girls?"

He had to laugh at that. "Not yet but I'll keep an eye out. And I really do need to finish these spreadsheets tonight."

"Yeah. 'course you do. You sound like you need to balance your chi, Ward. You sound stressed."

"My chi is getting balanced straight up your _ass_ if you don't let me get back to this."

Danny laughed. "Hey ... it's good talking to you, Ward."

Which should have been his cue to hustle the idiot off the goddamn phone, but instead he found himself hesitating. "Listen, Danny, I'm gonna be back in New York in a couple of weeks, and we could, I dunno, grab coffee or something? Catch up on Rand business and ... stuff."

"Yeah, sure!" Danny sounded surprised and delighted. "Yeah, let's do that. 'night, Ward."

"Night," Ward said, and then, thinking about the time difference, "Afternoon. Whatever."

After Danny hung up, he looked at the phone for a minute and thought about how that was the first personal call he'd gotten since he'd been over here -- not counting Colleen's message, which was for a specific reason. Then he shook his head and got back to the spreadsheets.

***

If he took a day off when the deal was wrapped two days later, and spent the day at the Louvre, it had nothing to do with Danny Rand.

(It got harder to sell himself on this when he passed the handful of postcards he'd picked up at the Louvre gift shop across the table to Danny in a Manhattan coffee shop and saw Danny's face light up. He always used to bring things back for Joy when he'd travel. It was oddly good to be able to do it again. The thought didn't occur to him until later that Danny probably hadn't gotten a lot of gifts in his life, at least not after he was ten years old, and that made him vaguely wish he'd brought back something other than postcards.)

* * *

**+1. Lhasa, Tibet**

"Got you something, Ward."

"Ugh." Ward threw his arm over his eyes, blocking out the light as the curtain over the doorway leading to the rest of the guesthouse was drawn back to let in a spear of sunlight before falling back into place. "Is it a quick death? Because I could really use one of those. God, my _head."_

Danny sat down on the edge of the sleeping pallet and nudged Ward's leg. He had a covered bowl in one hand, a silk-wrapped package in the other. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I'm going to pass out. I almost wish I would."

"Your breathing sounds better. It's my fault anyway; I really should have given you more time to acclimatize to the altitude. I'm sorry." Danny nudged him again. "C'mon, I brought you some soup."

"Let me guess," Ward mumbled without opening his eyes. "It's some kind of traditional remedy for altitude sickness that tastes like yak shit."

"Well, it is supposed to be a traditional remedy --"

"I hate being right."

"-- But it tastes great. I had a bowl of it already."

Ward lowered his arm and cracked his eyes open, squinting up at Danny. "How the hell are you jumping around this place like a mountain goat, anyway? And if words like 'balance' and 'chi' cross your lips, I will _end_ you. As soon as I can move again."

Danny grinned and folded his legs into a quick lotus on the edge of Ward's pallet. He set the bowl aside. "It's more that K'un Lun was at a high altitude too. I went through this when I first got there. Then I got used to it. I guess it comes back to you. You'll feel better in a couple of days. The soup helps, really. Also, you should be drinking water." He picked up a jug and shook it meaningfully.

Ward pushed himself up on his elbow to take a few sips, scowling at Danny the entire time. "This isn't making me regret this road trip from hell any less."

"C'mon, you were having fun up until the altitude sickness hit."

"Oh really? What part of this was fun again? The part where we got chased by some kind of temple death cult in Malaysia, or the part where someone tried to blow up a warehouse in Bangkok with us in it?"

"Right, you've been absolutely hating all the markets and restaurants and temples and that place with the gardens where you flirted with the girl selling flowers even though you didn't speak a word of Khmer --"

"I was not _flirting_ , I was practicing my people skills, which you keep telling me I need to do more often --"

"Anyway, the point is, if you hate it here, all you have to do is hop on a flight back to New York. It's not like you couldn't afford it. You could be sitting behind a desk at Rand by tomorrow."

"I just might, if you don't stop making my headache worse." He set down the water jug and gestured to the silk-wrapped bundle in Danny's lap. "What's that?"

"The other thing I got you." Danny smiled quickly, a little-kid grin, and unwrapped the silk carefully to bare the gleam of steel.

"Whoa." Headache momentarily forgotten, Ward sat up. Danny held up the knife to the light, the thin red silk folded to protect his fingers from the blade, and then passed it carefully to Ward, who held it with his fingertips. The blade was slender, about eight inches long; the handle was intricately carved bone or ivory, polished to a high sheen.

"Danny, man, this is gorgeous." Ward turned it over to catch the light. 

"Well balanced, too. It's a good knife."

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you didn't buy me this to hang on the wall of my office."

Danny's grin flashed again. "No. I think it's time you get a little better at defending yourself. You're good with guns, and I thought throwing knives might be a natural extension of that."

"Oh, it's for throwing?" Ward tried a test grip and drew back in an experimental overhand. Danny reached out quickly and took the knife out of his hand before he could actually throw it.

"Soon as you're up and about, I found a quiet little covered alleyway where we can set up some targets. In the meantime, how about you don't accidentally stab someone. Or damage our hosts' furniture."

"Giveth and taketh away." Ward flopped back down with a grunt of pain and threw his arm over his eyes again. "Come to Asia, you said. It'll be fun, you said."

Danny squeezed his arm. "Drink the soup, take some more ibuprofen, and get some sleep. I'm gonna go wander around a little bit. Ask some questions."

"Be careful, damn it! I'm not busting you out of a Chinese prison, Danny," Ward called after him. 

"Yeah you would," the answer drifted back cheerfully.

Ward groaned and rolled over. Yeah. He probably would. But he was totally making Danny pay for it later if he actually had to.


End file.
